I'm a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics in the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine. From 2005-2011 I was the Horvitz Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining UMD, I was at The Institute for Genomic Research, where I sequenced the genomes of many bacteria, including those used in the 2001 anthrax attacks. At TIGR I was part of the Human Genome Project and the co-founder of the influenza virus sequencing project (which is when I first learned of the anti-vaccine movement). My research group develops software for DNA sequence analysis, and our (free) software is used by scientific laboratories around the globe. I did my B.A. and M.S. at Yale University, and my Ph.D. at Harvard University, and I have published over 200 scientific papers. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@stevensalzberg1), or just subscribe to my alternate blog, http://genome.fieldofscience.com.

Congress Holds An Anti-Vaccination Hearing

I was in my car yesterday listening to C-SPAN (yes, I do that sometimes), when to my stunned surprise I heard Congressman Dan Burton launch into a diatribe on how mercury in vaccines causes autism. No, this was not a replay of a recording from a decade ago. The hearing was held just a few days ago by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Congressman Burton used this hearing to rehash a series of some of the most thoroughly discredited anti-vaccine positions of the past decade. Burton is a firm believer in the myth that vaccines cause autism, and he arrogantly holds the position that he knows the truth better than the thousands of scientists who have spent much of the past decade doing real science that proves him wrong.

In a classic political move, the committee called on scientists Alan Guttmacher from the NIH and Colleen Boyle from the CDC to testify, but in fact the committee just wanted to bully the scientists. Committee members lectured the scientists, throwing out bad science claims, often disguised as questions, thick and fast. Alas, Guttmacher and Boyle weren’t prepared for this kind of rapid-fire assault by pseudoscience.

Burton himself was the worst offender, offering anecdotes and bad science with an air of authority. He stated bluntly:

“I’m convinced that the mercury in vaccinations is a contributing factor to neurological diseases such as autism.”

No, it isn’t. Dozens of studies, involving hundreds of thousands of children, have found the same thing: there is no link whatsoever between thimerosal and autism, or between vaccines and autism. And Burton went off the deep end with this:

“It wasn’t so bad when a child gets one or two or three vaccines… Mercury accumulates in the brain until it has to be chelated.”

Bang bang, two false claims in 10 seconds. First he claims that mercury from vaccines “accumulates in the brain”, a statement with no scientific support at all. Then he claims that chelation therapy is the solution – a radical, potentially very harmful treatment that no sensible parent would ever force on their child. Unfortunately, some quack doctors have experimented with chelation therapy on autistic children, despite that fact that it can cause deadly liver and kidney damage, and one of them caused the death of a 5-year-old boy in 2005.

Burton also claimed that single-shot vials would “eliminate the possibilty of neurological damage from vaccines” – a claim that was invented out of thin air by the discredited anti-vax doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent 1998 study was the spark that started the current wave of anti-vax hysteria.

Congressman Bill Posey from Florida was just as bad as Burton, demanding a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, a standard talking point of the anti-vax movement. (Congressman Posey: do you even realize that your question is almost identical to what Jenny McCarthy asked five years ago, on the Larry King Live show?) Here’s his question to the CDC’s Boyle:

“I wonder if the CDC has conducted or facilitated a study comparing vaccinated children with unvaccinated children yet – have you done that?”

Dr. Boyle wasn’t prepared for this. She tried to point out that many studies have been done looking at the relation between vaccines and autism, but she didn’t get very far before interrupted, thus:

Posey: “Never mind. Stop there. That was the meaning of my question. You wasted two minutes of my time.”

Dr. Boyle simply wasn’t prepared for a Congressman who was parroting anti-vax activists. It’s too late now, but her response should have been this:

Congressman Posey, only an extremely unethical scientist would consider conducting such a study. To compare vaccinated versus unvaccinated children in the manner you suggest, one would have to withhold vaccines from young children. We know from decades of evidence, involving tens of millions of children, that vaccines save lives. Few if any medical interventions are more effective than vaccines.

But Congressman, the scientific community has done observational studies of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, comparing autism rates in children whose parents chose not to vaccinate. Those studies show that autism rates were slightly higher in unvaccinated children. That’s right, vaccinated children had autism at a lower rate.

So no, Congressman Posey, the CDC hasn’t done a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. Only a corrupt dictatorship could impose a study like that on its people. Is that what you want?

To make matters worse, the House committee invited Mark Blaxill to testify. Blaxill is a well-known anti-vaccine activist whose organization, SafeMinds, seems to revolve around the bogus claim that mercury in vaccines causes autism. His organization urges parents not to vaccinate their children, and giving him such a prominent platform only serves to spread misinformation among parents of young children.

Blaxill’s central claim is that that we’re in the midst of an autism epidemic:

“For a long time, reported U.S. autism rates were low, estimated at about 1 in 10,000. Then around 1990 something new and terrible happened to a generation of children. Autism rates didn’t just rise, they multiplied,” claimed Blaxill in his written testimony.

His entire argument builds on this. Yet multiple studies, looking carefully and objectively at the data, indicate that all or nearly all of the rise in autism cases is due to increasing diagnoses, which in turn is due to multiple factors: a dramatically broading of the definition of autism in the early 1990s, a greater awareness of the condition, and a greater willingness of doctors and parents to accept the diagnosis. For an objective summary of the evidence, see the articles by neurologist Steven Novella here and here, which summarize a dozen epidemiological studies. The weight of the evidence shows that the actual incidence of autism is either stable or possibly rising very slowly. There is no “autism epidemic.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Blaxill is a conspiracy theorist who claims that the “CDC has actively covered up the evidence surrounding autism’s environmental causes.”

Congress has every right to conduct oversight into medical research at the NIH and the CDC. But when Dan Burton, Bob Posey, and others decide in advance what the science says, and abuse their power to demand “answers” that validate their badly mistaken beliefs, people can be harmed. Over the past decade, the anti-vaccine movement has successfully convinced millions of parents to leave their kids unvaccinated, and the result has been serious outbreaks of whooping cough, haemophilus, measles, chicken pox, and mumps around the U.S. and Europe.

Some anti-vax parents claim that these childhood illnesses aren’t so bad. I wish they would talk to the parents of young children who have died in recent whooping cough outbreaks. These illnesses can be deadly.

Message to Congress: science isn’t easy, and autism is complicated. Don’t criticize science when it doesn’t give you the answer you thought you knew. That’s not how science works. Thousands of scientists are now trying to identify the causes of autism, and they’ve made progress, especially on the genetic front. The answer might not be simple, but we will find it.

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Actually Mr. Salzberg, if you were capable of doing a simple pubmed search on “autism and mercury” you would get references to over 180 papers. Anyone who bothers to read them would see that over 75% of these papers actually support the link. The papers that don’t support the link were data manipulation studies done in Denmark by a man named Poul Thorson. He was also discussed in length at the hearing. In fact Dr. Boyle from the CDC was asked when was the CDC going to re-examine the data generated by this criminal. One of the congressman refered to Thorson as one of the “biggest scumbags on earth”. I listened to the whole hearing. That was 2 hours of serious grilling by multiple congressmen.

Joe99: you are mistaken. There have been multiple careful studies looking at the link between mercury (thimerosal) and vaccines, and all have been negative. In fact, there was never any reason to believe the link existed – it was invented by a journalist pushing his book on the subject. E.g., here is one study: Stehr-Green et al., ‘Autism and thimerosal-containing vaccines: Lack of consistent evidence for an association’, Amer J. Prev. Medicine 2003. Here’s another that was done in the US using data from California: Verstraeten et al (2003), “Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases.” These both had very clear results: no link.

Some of the proponents of this failed hypothesis demanded that thimerosal be removed from vaccines, and said this would reduce autism rates. Well, that happened too – over 8 years ago – and autism diagnoses have climbed, not fallen. This provides another way of refuting the link – although no link was never demonstrated to begin with, so there is really nothing to refute.

I can’t believe you had the gall to bring up Verstraeten! Really? The study that found a link far stronger than the link between smoking and lung disease. And what did a silent whistleblower supply autism parents with? The real data, and how they manipulated the numbers. Adding back in kids under 3 knowing they would not have a diagnosis but would lower the numbers. Changing to original diagnosis only, so as with most kids with Autism, if they had an original diagnosis of language delay but later autism, you could only count them as language delayed, not as autism, again lowering the real numbers. Then adding back in 17,000 children originally excluded because they were born with a birth defect. Hmmm, again, no purpose except to water down the numbers. Yet, amazingly they still couldn’t make the damning numbers go away. Five generations of @#$%ing with the numbers and they release it publicly saying it neither proved nor disproved a link. That was a blatant lie, yes a cover up. Since you love to throw out the term “conspiracy theorist” I would love to supply you with thousands of examples of people of power conspiring to protect their own arses along with their profits at the cost of peoples health and lives. In America we are not just famous for believing in them, we are famous for having them. And by the way, as a long time parent of a child with autism, we were talking about vaccines and autism long before we ever heard the name of Wakefield, on chat groups and Autism organizations across the country. Can you draw a line in the sand when Thimerisol stopped? I would love to know because they recomended removal but for many it took years and the shelf life for some went into 2007. In the mean time they added the flu vaccine to the recomended list then the mandatory list without issuing a preference for thimerisol free. And the biggest crime of all, asking that pregnant mothers be given the flu shot, again without preference and despite the fact they have never ever been tested on pregnant women. Where is the science in that? The testing is on unsuspecting women and if there is no follow up to adverse outcomes, miscarriages, autism, we again hear it is all “anectdotal”. You are either severely misinformed or a damned liar!

What you mean is you are too clueless to do a keyword search. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937804021027

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937809011089

Etc, etc….

And too clueless to find the countries that completely banned all chimerical from vaccines many years ago–didn’t help.

And you are way too clueless to understand how the anti-vaccs have systematically lied about the Verstraeten study–they never found a link between vaccines and autism. And you don’t care enough about the truth to ask an actual scientists for help understanding.

But hey, if you insist upon publicly humiliating yourself, please keep right on posting.

Currently, all pediatric vaccines in the routine infant immunization schedule are manufactured without thimerosal as a preservative. As of January 14, 2003, the final lots of vaccines containing thimerosal as a preservative expired.

You cite work of indicted fraudster Poul Thorsen in which the authors privately admitted autism incidence and prevalence was decreasing after thimerosal was removed. In Verstraeten, an 11-fold increased risk for autism was found associated with thimerosal exposure – Verstraeten himself admitted that he would conclude it was causing harm, including autism, and said the association “just won’t go away” before diluting the results and getting hired by GSK.

Steve, the studies you cite don’t support you, they hurt you; they initially showed results that showed vaccines caused autism but were suppressed instead of being reported by conflicted researchers who wanted to bury the connection. You support this unethical behavior?

PS: How do you explain the fact that the autism prevalence fell 20% in one of the CDC-tracked states for children born in the year 2000 after the announcement to remove thimerosal? I’m asking because your buddy Dr. David Gorski promised that if such a decline were to occur, he “will concede that this would be pretty good epidemiological evidence that there might be a connection…” http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/11/dr-david-gorski-admits-thimerosal-might-cause-autism.html

Poul Thorsen conducted *financial* fraud, not scientific fraud. His work did not contribute a major role to the paper either. (If you do some homework, you’ll find some suggest he was a “floating” author.)

“Jake, what on earth led you to the conclusion that cherry-picking the Alabama number with no further analysis was a sound decision?”

I just posted an entire article I wrote analyzing it – the first statistically-significant decline in any CDC-tracked state – hardly “cherry-picking.” If you think that’s what it is, then why don’t you ask your pal Dr. David Gorski why he said back in 2005 that he’d call just such an outcome “pretty good epidemiological evidence there might be a connection”?

He committed both. He was fully aware that the declining autism prevalence and incidence in Denmark following thimerosal’s removal from vaccines contradicted his study’s fudged results claiming autism increased. A letter to NEJM was censored when it pointed out that his MMR study provided a 45% increased risk for autism associated with the vaccine. The lead author of both studies, Kreesten Madsen, was Poul Thorsen’s student as well as his direct subordinate at the North American Neuro-Epidemiology Alliances directed by Thorsen, where he was also principal investigator for all relevant projects including the vaccine-autism studies he coauthored.

Steve .. are you troubled by the fact the lead researcher .. Dr. Poul Thorsen .. of the Denmark study that claims autism rates actually rose in Denmark .. AFTER thimerosal had been removed .. is now a FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE .. ACCUSED OF ABSCONDING WITH A MILLION US “RESEARCH DOLLARS” HE WAS GIVEN BY THE CDC TO CONDUCT HIS NOW SUSPECT STUDY?

This was the major study upon which the IOM incredibly relied upon to support their lame claim there is no “conclusive evidence that thimerosal contributes to autism”.

Just a warning about some of these posters. They have already spammed Emily Willingham’s blog on Forbes, with the same walls of words in their feeble attempts to go off/topic with studies from unreliable sources.

You’ll reach the point, where you just ignore the off-topic thread-derailing posts.

“I just posted an entire article I wrote analyzing it – the first statistically-significant decline in any CDC-tracked state – hardly ‘cherry-picking.’”

Yes, Jake, I read your piece. Just saying that something isn’t cherry-picking doesn’t make it so. Two data points do not make a trend. Only half the counties in the state are covered, and there’s the real issue of diagnosis in rural areas. You do not in any way even attempt to justify why one Alabama data point trumps the combined ADDM data. In fact, you don’t even bother to state what you think “statistically significant” means in this context. If you just want to write something snide about David Gorski, that’s fine, but don’t be surprised if someone happens to point out that that appears to be all you’ve managed to do.

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Oh, you mean that in part of one state ASD diagnosis declined while it INCREASED in every other monitored state for “children born in the year 2000 after the announcement to remove thimerosal?”

Well, the data from Alabama were unusual, yes?

Of course, Alabama provided the lowest percentage of the total population under surveillance for analysis among the study sites (range: 1.0% [Alabama]-6.3% [Utah]). Alabama is among the few sites that have not been granted access to records at education sources. Over all, ASD prevalence estimates were significantly higher among boys than among girls in all 14 ADDM sites, but Alabama was again unusual, with male-to-female prevalence ratios ranging from 2.7 in Utah to 7.2 in Alabama.

Moreover, missing records were a significant problem in Alabama: Underascertainment of the number of children with ASD in Alabama was estimated at 16%. The great majority of missing records in Alabama was from facilities that were in the process of converting from paper to electronic records or had storage limitations during the period of data collection, so the large number of missing records might have had a one-time effect on the 2008 surveillance data for this site.

It was interesting that the Alabama data suggest a DECREASE in ASD among non-hispanic BLACK children, although ASD prevalence increased across all sites by 42% in this underserved population. Perhaps the missing records may have influenced this apparent but otherwise inexplicable decline.

Of course, since diagnosis of mental retardation experienced a huge decline of over two-thirds from 20,260 in 2000 to 6,121 in 2010 as diagnosis of ASD increased, there are clearly other–and clearly social–factors that must be considered before accepting any particular number as representing a true increase in the prevalence of ASD.

“The existence of the records, the ability to locate them, and the quantity and quality of the information in the records are all relevant issues that affect ASD prevalence using ADDM methods. Because overall prevalence was lower among the sites with access to health evaluations alone, sites that lacked access to education evaluations or to another source that provides free evaluations to the public likely underestimated ASD prevalence.” http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm

So, missing records was also a problem for the 2006 prevalence report also, not to mention other states. The only difference is that in 2008, the CDC decided to estimate the precise percentage of records missing and used that as an excuse for the decline as opposed to making any effort to see if the impact by missing records was the same in 2006. So the only irrefutably inconsistency between reporting years of 2006 and 2008 is that the former was prevalence of autism in children born before the announcement to remove thimerosal vaccines while the latter measured autism prevalence in children born after.

“ASD diagnosis declined while it INCREASED in every other monitored state”

Read my article on why that may be. Btw, autism did not increase in every other monitored state, it also plateaued in others.

“Of course, since diagnosis of mental retardation experienced a huge decline of over two-thirds from 20,260 in 2000 to 6,121 in 2010 as diagnosis of ASD increased, there are clearly other–and clearly social–factors that must be considered before accepting any particular number as representing a true increase in the prevalence of ASD.”

Wait, you just attempted to provide excuses for why there was a decrease in autism for the first time in the ADDM. Now you’re contradicting yourself.

Since the lot numbers on the Hepatitis B vaccines my children administered in 2002 were manufactured in 1998, 4 years later, this point was not “made up out of thin air”

“Can you draw a line in the sand when Thimerisol stopped? I would love to know because they recomended removal but for many it took years and the shelf life for some went into 2007.”

All the vaccines that existed prior to the reduction of thimerosal in 2001 were used. They were not discarded as hazardous waste (unfortunately) so it is not outside the realm of possibility that thimerosal preserved vaccines were still being used up in 2007.

Also Liz this is not true since the flu vaccine is still preserved with thimerosal in multi vial form:

Liz said: Currently, all pediatric vaccines in the routine infant immunization schedule are manufactured without thimerosal as a preservative.

Jake, just a quibble, but please don't use quotation marks when the text doesn't actually appear in what you're referring to. You know perfectly well that simply waving around p-values cuts no ice at all. This is health-only reporting, with a documented lacuna in the records. You understand why Utah and New Jersey are both outliers on the high side despite being on opposite sides of the uptake field, right?

I’m not trying to refute either side here (in fact, I believe both sides of this argument are incorrect.)

But I just wanted to point out that “January 14, 2003″, when “the final lots of vaccines containing thimerosal as a preservative expired.”

COINCIDES *EXACTLY* WITH THE TIME-FRAME IN QUESTION, namely- When the TREMENDOUS INCREASES in the number of Autism cases was AT IT’S PEAK.

Also: http://www.safety.vanderbilt.edu/msds/products/mercury.pdf

DO YOU REALLY THINK IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO *INJECT* MERCURY INTO *CHILDREN*!!?

“Fish: Rainbow trout: LC50 = 0.16-0.90 mg/L; 96 Hr; Unspecified”

This states that mercury concentrations of just .16mg/L (milligrams per Liter), or in other words, 160 micrograms of mercury is the LETHAL DOSAGE for a rainbow trout.

It is VERY WELL established that Mercury is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS NEUROTOXIN, a.k.a ALTERS/DESTROYS BRAIN CAPABILITIES-

It doesn’t matter whether or not “no link to autism” has been “found”- exposing children to even MICROSCOPIC levels of Mercury, ESPECIALLY DIRECTLY TO THEIR BLOOD STREAM- IS RECKLESS FUCKING ENDANGERMENT.

Anyone who “accepts” that this was COMMON PRACTICE, *AND* that there’s such thing as “SAFE-LEVELS”, *AND*- Who isn’t *RAGING MAD* about Big Pharma PROFITING from it, while using their lobbying power to REQUIRE that kids show proof of their vaccinations in order to ATTEND SCHOOLS, etc… Is probably not someone that should pretend they’re any sort of reliable or knowledgeable authority regarding matters of MEDICINE, PSYCHIATRY, NEUROLOGY, TOXICOLOGY, and MICROBIOLOGY.

(all of which are directly applicable when competently, and rigorously conducting such a study).

Simply repeating that “there’s no scientific basis”, and pretending that pharmaceuticals are ‘probably safe’- Instead of preferring to “Err on the side of CAUTION”, is Universally STUPID.

Yes, I really liked that study they did a few years ago that showed that mercrury was actually good for ya!

They changed the stats around so much that they actually messed up there.

Love stats don’t you?

You can make them say anything -even that attacks in Afganistan by Qu’aiti are down when in fact they were not. And what does stats mean anyway — that if attacks goes down — that everything is okay??? Really?

But as the computerized heatlh maintenance organization databases do their thing– My family are racking up all kinds of drugs to help them cope with a damaged immune system — that the computerized health maintenance organization datablases are NOT looking for.

Never had one of them computers to contact me and I have three in this family — probably four since I have an autoimmune disease that attacked my thyroid it came one very slow with a few symptoms that I did not recognize right after a DPT shot at age 21.

According to Professor Boyd Haley, thimerosal (50% ethyl mercury) is still in use. Quantity per dose is down from, I believe, 25mcg/DTaP and Hep B to 5mcg, but still at 25mcg in the influenza vaccines.

Remember, aluminum is present in many vaccines, and in B12 shots. It is also highly toxic and should not be injected into anyone, and anytime, except as a weapon.

According to Professor Boyd Haley, thimerosal (50% ethyl mercury) is still in use. Quantity per dose is down from, I believe, 25mcg/DTaP and Hep B to 5mcg, but still at 25mcg in the influenza vaccines.

Remember, aluminum is present in many vaccines, and in B12 shots. It is also highly toxic and should not be injected into anyone, and anytime, except as a weapon.

Those congresspeople weren’t bullying. They were simply cutting through the BS to get their questions answered.

True, Dr. Guttmacher and Dr. Boyde did not appear to be well prepared. They should have been well prepared. Then again, maybe they didn’t want to be ready to answer the tough questions – easier to say “I’ll get back to you on that.”

There’s no doubt that the rate of autism has shown a huge increase. Mark Blaxill is brilliant. Vaccines do cause autism. People who criticize our current vaccine program are not necessarily “anti-vaccine”, just like people who try to prevent plane crashes or auto accidents are not anti-airplanes or anti-cars. Several congresspeople pointed out that they believe in the importance of vaccines, but that we need better studies on the safety of our current schedule, where babies are vaccinated for 6 to 9 illnesses at one office visit, receiving a couple of dozen vaccines during the first two years of life – unprecedented in human history.

Parental observations must not be summarily dismissed as “anecdotal” without investigation. Adverse reactions to vaccines must not be dismissed as “coincidence” without investigation. We need clinical research on individual children to understand why these reactions happen, who is susceptible, how to prevent and how to treat.

And we need studies comparing short- and long-term health outcomes in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations. Obviously we cannot do a gold standard prospective double-blind study in humans. But we can do that in animals. And, we can do retrospective studies in humans.

Autism has huge costs for individuals, families, and society as a whole. This generation of children is entering adulthood and aging out of school. Their parents are aging and in a few short decades we will die and no longer be able to care for them. Society will be looking at a huge cost to care for this population. We simply do not have that rate of disability among today’s adults.

Three cheers for the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Twyla: retrospective studies of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children have already been done. They clearly show that vaccinated children are NOT at greater risk for autism. In fact, the trend is that vaccinated children have slightly lower rates of autism, though this is not statistically significant. E.g., Dales et al (2001), JAMA, “Time trends in autism and MMR coverage in California”, showed no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Madsen et al (2002), NEJM, looked at over 500,000 children and compared autism rates between vaccinated an unvaccinated – and vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism. Honda et al (2005) looked at the same question in Japanese children, and again found no link. There are many more.

Millions of dollars have been spent studying these questions already. The science is very clear that neither vaccines nor any component of vaccines causes or contributes to autism. Further money spent looking at this issue is money that is taken away from research on the real causes of autism.

Mr. Salzberg, Madsen and Thorson looked at data in Denmark concerning the MMR vaccine and autism. This is not vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. In fact if you bothered to read the paper you would see that the children in this study did receive all their other vaccines. One would think that this study had 2 categories; got the MMR and became autistic and didn’t get the MMR and became autistic. But no, they added a third category which said got the MMR, became autistic but was determined (by whom you ask) to be autistic before the shot. They were then counted as autistic but did not get the MMR. This third category goosed the data until there was no statistical difference between the first 2 categories. Every paper done by these fraudsters, and there were many, was rigged.

Steve, you’re either a liar or a fool or both. There are no studies of the vaccinated / unvaccinated. The studies you don’t even link to by name either study a single vaccine or ingredient or simply measure on-time vaccination vs slightly delayed vaccines

Mr. Salzberg, Please provide asap the links to the fully vaccinated vs fully unvaccinated studies of children that you speak of. I know they do not exist so I am curious to see what you talk about. Thanks, Maurine Meleck SC

One thing you could do here would be to provide the alpha and power that would be required from a study to satisfy you that there’s no there there and thence to calculate the needed sample size. Good luck.

You might be interested in work that explicitly attempted to evaluate the prevalence of ASD among unvaccinated children.

That study should be just as meaningful as a proposed project recently flogged at AoA, which will similarly be based exclusively on internet contacts and similarly use unverified, anonymized data; the existing study showed that ASD is as common among unvaccinated children as it is in the general population:

http://vaccineinjury.info/results-unvaccinated/ads-autism.html; see also http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2011/08/31/internet-survey-shows-high-autism-rate-in-unvaccinated-children/

That work indicates the proportion of unvaccinated children with ASD in various age groups: in 4-5 year olds (1:114), 7-8 year olds (1:126), 9-10 year olds (1:52), and 11-12 year olds (1:81).

A comparison of vaccinated and unvaccinated children showed that unvaccinated children die of vaccine-preventable diseases. [Vaccinated versus unvaccinated children: how they fare in first five years of life Trop Geogr Med 1990;42:182-4] While I suppose that that might seem relatively unimportant to US-based vaccine-phobic activists, a recent study in a first-world country (Germany) similarly showed that the the main difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is that unvaccinated children suffer from more vaccine-preventable disease. [Vaccination Status and Health in Children and Adolescents: Findings of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS) Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108(7): 99-104; DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2011.0099]

Hey Boris- review the tape of the hearings. Dr. Boyle from CDC said there are no studies comparing health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Anecdotal evidence, obtained when the physician asks questions and listens carefully to the parents, consistently suggests that many children are getting sick and regressing developmentally as a result of their childhood shots.

“Dr. Boyle from CDC said there are no studies comparing health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.”

No, he stated that the CDC hadn’t conducted one. Now, while you’re at it, I will pose the same question to you as I did to Maurine: give me the alpha and the power that would prevent this from being an exercise in futility, and calculate the required sample size. Providing endpoints would also be helpful, as “health outcomes” doesn’t mean anything in particular.

Dr Boyle is a women. The onus is on the purveyors to demonstrate the safety of the intervention. The intervention requires indemnification from torts. The VICP demonstrates that children are being brain damaged and killed by childhood immunizations.

I have already provided you with data on autism risk in vaccinated vs. 100% unvaccinated kids. You remember, the study on 100K plus US kids. There was no difference in risk. Did you want the references again?

Correction: the anti-vaccs have lied about all the studies from Denmark. Clear for anyone that cares about the truth.

“JPANDS” – Actually, it was a letter originally submitted to NEJM but got censored from publication and was only much later published in JPANDS. Why do you think it got censored? To cover up yet more of OIG fugitive Poul Thorsen’s data prostitution no less.

“Clifford Miller” – So? Look at the graph and tell me what you see.

From the JAMA letter: “…if the total number of autism cases divided by the total number of births are near the true incidence rates for California, the data also suggest that the rate of early MMR immunization is correlated with the incidence of autism.”

“retrospective studies of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children have already been done.”

Wrong – the closest such study done to this was a phone survey by Generation Rescue that found an autism prevalence that was twice as high in vaccinated boys compared to unvaccinated boys. Boys, as you probably know, are at much greater risk for ASDs than girls.

‘As we discussed on Friday, we have become aware through Poul Thorsen of an exciting opportunity to study the role of MMR vaccine and autism using several registries/existing studies and the repository of biologic specimens and laboratory capabilities in Denmark. Attached below is a proposal for such a study. Poul will be leaving on Thursday to travel to Denmark where he will be meeting with the PIs for the proposed study on June 6th. We would like to be able to have Poul say whether it is likely that CDC (NIP) can fund the study, if NIP is interested. The proposed budget is included; there may be additional sources of funding (in addition to NIP) but we are not certain at this time. Unfortunately, the DD Branch does not have much (if any) $$ to fund the study, but we do have the expertise that we have developed due to the autism surveillance in Atlanta and the MMR/autism case control study. I will be out of the office tomorrow, but you may contact Diana or Poul if you have questions. Thank you so much for considering this proposal.’

Offhand, I see that Cliffy has mislabeled this mess in addition to brilliantly comparing uptake data in one area with prevalence data from another.

Terada et al. is right here: http://journal.kansensho.or.jp/Disp?style=abst&vol=76&mag=0&number=3&start=180&lang=EN Leaving aside the fact that if he tried to read numbers off of Figure 4, he did it poorly, the fact of the matter is that his effort does not report the combined uptake that it claims to; 1989 was not a trough year by this metric.

Jake, he’s plotting *seven-year cumulative* all-ASD incidence from Honda et al., including the “probable” cases and comparing this on an unrelated y-axis of *yearly* counts, and you think this is impressive? Jeezums.

Here is an example of a retrospective study that looked at the risk of autism in vaccinated vs. 100% unvaccinated kids in a dataset of 100,000 plus US kids: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2887572/Simpsonwood-Transcript20Searchable

The results for autism are on page 44–no significant difference in risk for autism, no trend towards more autism.

Anyone that bothers to read the words can trace how the anti-vaccs have lied and lied and lied about this work.

“Leaving aside the fact that if he tried to read numbers off of Figure 4, he did it poorly”

No, you misread his graph. The 1989 vaccination coverage rate would have been for children born in 1987, autism incidence for which unfortunately did not make the Honda/Rutter data reported in this graph, which is of children born after that. What this graph shows is that by-and-large, when autism incidence went up, so did measles/MMR vaccination coverage. Likewise, when autism incidence went down, so did measles/MMR vaccination coverage. This is not complicated.

“Jake, he’s plotting *seven-year cumulative* all-ASD incidence from Honda et al., including the “probable” cases and comparing this on an unrelated y-axis of *yearly* counts, and you think this is impressive? Jeezums.”

It’s more than what Honda/Rutter did: simply dismissing the MMR-autism link while utterly failing to take into account the reciprocal rise in related vaccinations.

That’s because it was not powerful enough to pick up an association in all kids, just boys, because ASDs are a lot more common in boys than girls. What you just did is called a Type II error in epidemiology.

No, that was not a study of vaccinated children v. unvaccinated children, that was of children who received more thimerosal compared to less, and was a watered down version of an earlier study that children who received the greatest amounts of thimerosal were 11-times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than those who received none.

You didn’t read the Simpsonwood document before commenting on it did you?

Instead of arguing by assertion, let’s look at the words from my link.

Question: what was the control group?

Answer: “Zero, that is pretty obvious. They didn’t get any vaccines.” page 35.

Anyone that reads the words can trace how the anti-vaccs have been lying about this document for many years now. Fortunately the anti-vacc lies of watering down the data etc don’t stand up to any good faith effort at fact-checking.

Oh, and Thorsen was not the PI. You don’t seem to know what the word means.

And you don’t seem to have read your own link correctly. It doesn’t even list Thorsen as being involved in autism work–much state he is/was the autism PI.

And naturally you ignore the fact that Thorsen couldn’t have tampered with the data…I suppose because that would mean admitting that the anti-vaccs once again are caught trying to deceive parents.

Now we have the pseudo skeptics protecting Poul Thorsen who is on the run and under indictment saying that he couldn’t have “tampered with” the data.

These same people accused Dr Wakefield of outlandish things he couldn’t have possibly “tampered with” either, that didn’t seem to bother you in the least. And the worst thing Dr Wakefield was so vilified over was what he shared about the parental approved 5.00 birthday party blood draw because he was honest enough to disclose that information.

It was clear that Poul Thorsen was able to tamper with the hard earned tax dollars of Americans that was earmarked for AUTISM study and that he is not trustworthy. Someone who fits right in with the crowd posting here.

The ‘little part’ that you left out, by which I mean the preceding sentence, might be of interest to anyone who wants some context into your ‘reference’:

At three months of age, children have from zero to seventy five micrograms of ethymercury exposure from thimerosal containing vaccines. Zero, that’s pretty obvious. They didn’t receive any vaccines’.

After this herculean cherry picking, pretending that a snapshot in time of three months means they never got vaccinated, you have the gall to state:

Anyone that reads the words can trace how the anti-vaccs have been lying about this document for many years now.

Talk about lying for this document for many years now; you tried this exact same pile of monkey muffins on autism.about.com a few years back.

You are smart enough to know what you are doing is intellectually dishonest, you know for a fact that trying to use transcripts like this as evidence is a joke, and you keep on doing it again and again. Why?

Hey, by the way, did you look at any of the exclusion criteria for the Simpsonwood ‘data’? Any child who did not get two polio vaccines by age 1 were excluded! I doubt anyone cares, but if you do, check out page 261 of the document that W&N so gleefully challenges people to read to get ‘the facts’. Here is one of the exclusion criteria:

Children who did not receive two polio vaccines by age 1. This condition was set to avoid including children enrolled in the HMO that did not use the services

For crying out loud, right there, directly in the exclusions is a criteria that should tell everyone, including W&N, that this study did not evaluate children who were not vaccinated!

This was also stated on page 32 of the document:

Finally, we excluded children that didn’t receive at least two polio vaccines before the end of the first year of life.

Is there anyone out there that believes that W&N was clever enough to parse out his ‘They didn’t get any vaccines’ statement, but not smart enough to read that failing to be vaccinated for polio was an exclusion criteria?

There is only really three choices:

1) W&N is too stupid to understand that the exclusion criteria means that every child in the cohort was vaccinated.

2) Someone spoonfed W&N the quote and page number to use, and he has been parroting it for years without actually having read the transcript himself.

3) W&N knows exactly what he is doing, knows with great clarity that the transcript doesn’t say what he claims it does, but figures no one will bother to look to up and challenge him on it.

I am officially questioning your integrity. At least most of the people you argue against aren’t clever enough, you’ve got the brains, and have decided to use them to deceive people. You should be ashamed of yourself.

“No, you misread his graph. The 1989 vaccination coverage rate would have been for children born in 1987…”

As far as I can tell, he’s not reporting “coverage” in any meaningful fashion, just total annual doses from 300 miles away, arbitarily shifting them by two years, comparing with seven-year incidence, and declaring victory over the unimpressive effort in predictable graph-crank fashion. It’s meaningless, Jake, and the fact that Terada et al. is in Japanese means that it’s difficult to reckon precisely what they’re reporting anyway.

“They clearly show that vaccinated children are NOT at greater risk for autism. In fact, the trend is that vaccinated children have slightly lower rates of autism, though this is not statistically significant. E.g., Dales et al (2001), JAMA, “Time trends in autism and MMR coverage in California”, showed no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Madsen et al (2002), NEJM, looked at over 500,000 children and compared autism rates between vaccinated an unvaccinated – and vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism. Honda et al (2005) looked at the same question in Japanese children, and again found no link. There are many more.”

FIRST OF ALL, Whenever a ‘study’ winds up “Concluding the exact opposite”, in this case- insinuating that “vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism.”- It is *NOT* “conclusive”- NOR is it even VALID DATA.

“Slightly Lower” is not a number. Nor is there ANYTHING being “Clearly Shown” here. 500,000 is the number of children being compared- How many were considered to be Autistic? How many of these supposed “Autism” diagnosis were there for these Vax / Non-Vax groups- EXACT NUMBERS WOULD BE HELPFUL, however at this point ANY numbers are going to be infinitely more accurate than whatever “Slightly Lower” is supposed to be telling us.

OH, AND I ALMOST FORGOT! We also need to track:

WHICH SPECIFIC VACCINE’S WE’RE REFERING TO. what, did you think that if “one vaccine is safe, every vaccine ever will also be safe”? WHAT EXACTLY *IS* AUTISM? is it actually an observable brain function disorder, like epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, etc. OR, is it just kind of some broad label used to describe ‘seemingly similar’ cognitive disabilities- essentially making “Autism” the new name for everyone who used to get labeled an “Idiot”, “Dunce”, “Retard”, etc. If there’s no PRECISE DEFINITION for what the Autism disorder PHYSICALLY CONSISTS OF- well, then there’s exactly 0% chance of us EVER being able to “find a link” to what causes the disease!

And also, while “500,000″ may seem like a pretty good base for this study- it’s nowhere near the data we would *really* need to gather in order to “call this one busted”… Namely: EVERY PERSON WHO HAS EVER RECEIEVED A VACCINE, and EVERY PERSON WHO HAS EVER BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM. along with ANY AND ALL OTHER ‘possible’ SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THESE PEOPLE WE CAN COME UP WITH. Who knows, maybe it’s the fluorescent lights in hospitals that later causes babies to develop Autism… Maybe it’s some chemicals to make their toys… Maybe, it’s the 50+ dangerous chemicals that pretty much EVERY house has sitting around, Or the unending bombardment from TV, Radio, Wireless/Cordless Phones, Satellites, and now even TV Remotes, Wireless Keyboards, Mice, AND Almost Everything Else now too! MY GUESS: IT’S ALL OF THESE FACTORS. How to Test: Check with Aboriginal tribes in South America, Australia, etc… Who’s children are likely NOT to have been exposed to ANY of the things I mentioned (or at least FAR, FAR less).

If there’s a drastic difference in the Autism rate- then we definitely need to take a long hard look at EVERYTHING… Also, if the rates of Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox, Measles, etc. etc. happen to be drastically lower than what we’re seeing in the U.S. right now- WELL, we might have to go ahead and admit that some of our vaccines aren’t working anymore- SOMEDAY, we might even *CURE* a disease or two- (rather than pretend that we’ve ‘eradicated’ them).

CONCLUSION: BOTH Sides of this debate are completely full of shit- and more importantly, CONGRESS, PHARMA, CDC, FDA, and especially the NEWS MEDIA, will continue MAKING $BILLIONS- while everyone argues about it like they *know* the cause(s).

The “refusal” is not because researchers didn’t think autism was immune-related. It was because of the ethics of not vaccinating a group of people, knowing that would expose them to disease. Research studies have to pass ethical controls.

The idea that autism might be immune-related has in fact been around for many years. It’s not new.

Not doing a vaccinated v. unvaccinated trial does not mean that researchers will not be able to work out if autism is linked to vaccines. As Steven pointed out *many* studies have already looked into this issue – no autism-vaccine link was found.

The ethical lapse occurs when physicians bound by the Hippocratic oath give healthy children an intervention that is so dangerous that it requires legal indemnification for the manufacturers. The fact that vaccines routinely cause irreparable brain damage is the raison d’etre of the VICP

Ethics is not in question here as there are already thousands of completely unvaccinated children that are available for just such a study. I know a few hundred of them personally and their numbers are growing every day!Why do they not vaccinate, because they see what Salzburg is blind to, that something has happened to our children, they are relatives, friends, colleagues, and congregation members with the parents of autistic children that were also witness to a perfectly healthy, normal child that reacted to and regressed from vaccines. Then they get to watch the treatment that these parents get for speaking out, and the lack of treatment for the now severely damaged and disabled children. Lack of adequate medical care as severe co-morbid issues are ignored by doctors because it’s either Politically incorrect to acknowledge them or seen as part and parcel to autism, so children are left to suffer, parents are bankrupted, fired, divorced, and even driven to the far too often murder suicide act. They also see mistreatment by schools who set the bars low and even sometimes mistreat or abuse these children. They see the lack of help from all quarters, the denials of the link they themselves witnessed as well and they look at all that and say, “No thanks, I want no part of that”, and with that national response, even denying the obvious epidemic, they decide that even a small risk would be too much in the chance of joining this group. Where children and families are cut off and left to flounder on their own. Where the options are no treatment at all, mistreatment, or bankruptcy and forclosure to pay for treatments. Where mainstream allopaths pat them on the back and say we don’t know what causes it and there are no treatments and then act shocked when parents turn to each other and the internet, and call them desperate. They see teachers and doctors that were once told they would never see a case of autism in their entire careers that are now overwhelmed by the numbers and the severity of the disability. They see the classrooms exploding with drugged and sick children and ask “so this is the health they are promoting?” Small town schools that once saw one individual in a 10 to 20 year span with an intellectual disability now have overflowing classrooms and are being forced to cut funding on everything else to pay for the exploding numbers of severely disabled children on the spectrum, while officials deny we have a problem. We as parents, witnesses, don’t have to do a thing to sway all these people, they are doing it on their own as they witness the epidemic, the catastrophe in progress and your response. People like you do more for the cause than 100 of us as innocent bystanders see your words and say “how can you be so blind?” When you attack, bluster, refuse to acknowledge even the obvious, defend bad science or no science at all just push your personal beliefs, like religous zealots unable to fathom a different reality, unable to acknowledge that children are injured, that vaccines can cause brain injury just not autism, that they can bring about “autistic like symptoms” but not autism itself, can overstimulate the immune system and cause it to attack itself but that too is not autism. There are millions of children available and they are the healthiest children I know, which is of course the real reason the studies will never be done. They will continue to claim that the withholding of one vaccine out of 14 and comparing children who received 13 to those that received 14 is somehow an “unvaccinated” study and there is no difference. Continue to tout studies that were blatantly and openly manipulated. I know, let’s count autism cases “in hospital only” until thimerisol was removed in Denmark and then let’s count all cases, which 90% of autism is not diagnosed in hospital, then let’s claim that not only does thimerisol not cause autism, mercury has a protective affect on the brain of infants. This is why the numbers are growing, giving us plently to choose from in a true vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study. The parents have already made the difficult and ethical decision for the researchers, no they just have to step up and do the studies. I won’t hold my breath!

You know very well that the claim that there is legal indemnification for the vaccine manufacturers is an anti-vacc lie. I suppose they keep lying about this because they don’t want parents reading the existing US civil court cases–because they expose the anti-vacc fraud.

E.g. http://mdcourts.gov/opinions/coa/2009/112a08.pdf

Are you really too clueless to figure out that most doctors don’t take the oath? That would explain a lot.

You could try acting ethically–in this case asking qualified scientists about how to design experiments.

They would point out that doing a randomized, prospective trial is completely unethical.

They would point out how doing now a non-randomized, retrospective study would give invalid data.

They would point that–when it was possible to do one–a retrospective study on 100K US kids was performed. 100% unvaccinated kids had the same risk for autism as vaccinated kids. Naturally the anti-vaccs lie about this data.

Just like the lie about the Danish study you commented on. The only question is do you care enough about the truth to read the facts.

Setting aside the rather “quirky’ response above. The continuing research surrounding autism etiology and pathology will be answered through the systematic investigation of physiology, neurology and gentics that combine to make what we all ‘are’.

Interestingly such findings are converging on key elements of the immune system in all three areas.

It must be really difficult to write such trite, irresponsible articles regarding vaccines, when you know deep down inside—that something’s rotten in Denmark. Thousands upon thousands of parents will say that days and sometimes even mere hours after their children were administered vaccines…they saw a change. We’re not talking “redness at the injection site”, or “uncontrollable screaming” either homeboy. I guess it’s just the world’s craziest coincidence, right? How long will you and your ilk ride that rickety train? I guess when you’re a Professor of Medicine and Biostatistics at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine—and depend on dough from your Big Pharma pals, you’ll pretty much shuck and jive no matter how deep the river of dung gets. Right? I mean, is that it? Don’t worry broseph, you’re not alone—I’ve seen people do a lot worse for a lot less. Hey, remember not too long ago when respectable doctors stood on witness stands proclaiming that smoking doesn’t cause cancer? I mean, they used to actually prescribe smoking for anxiety! Ha ha ha ha! They were getting some major funding from the tobacco industry. But this is different…this isn’t like that, right? Yeah…we’ll see. How does the OECD have the U.S. ranked globally for infant mortality? Oh, yeah…that’s right—we’re 31st. Just behind the Slovak Republic. You know what’s funny about the countries who are ranked better than us? Don’t worry, I’ll answer it for you. Starting from the top of the list and working our way down…the amount of vaccines administered per country increases as the infant mortality rate increases. But hey, that’s just coincidence too, right? Listen, if you call yourself a real journalist—why don’t you take a little looksie at what I just told you. But you won’t because you’re on the take. I’ll take my I.Q. and put it against yours any ol’ day Salzy. What’s your tag-line say under your name: Celebrating good science by fighting pseudoscience and bad medicine. Hmmmmm, really?. Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Only, I’m not funded by those that I’m examining. You just refuse to believe the FACT that linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs shows a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates. It’s all there homeslice…and it’s not a coincidence. I must ask where you will hide, when the facts are brought to light?

“You just refuse to believe the FACT that linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs shows a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.”

This reference is presumably to the laughable duo of Neil Miller and Gary “mail-order Ph.D.” Goldman. Is that you, Belkin? If so, it’s appropriate to note the COI. As for taking your IQ and frottaging around, perhaps you’d like to address the spectacular flaws in this one that have been raised elsewhere, e.g., here: http://justthevax.blogspot.com/2011/05/oh-goodness-here-i-wanted-to-go-to-bed.html

Really Boris? Attack the credibility of the researchers? Is that all you have left? Talk to me about Dr David Lewis and his report on the BMJ attack on the Lancet study. The eminently qualified pseudo journalist Brian Deer was the heavy weight stopper on that deal. How do you feel about Deer’s bona fides to attack Professor Walker-Smith, abd how do you feel about Walker-Smith’s exoneration by Justice Mittig?

“Attack the credibility of the researchers? Is that all you have left?”

You seem to have missed the part where the “research” itself has already been thoroughly dismantled. These are people who couldn’t even *count* consistently. Making fun of diploma-mill credentials is gravy.

The research that thoroughly dismantled the research was itself thoroughly dismantled. Read David Lewis’s report/complaint. Acknowledge that Professor Walker-Smith was vindicated in England’s highest court. Justify the take down of the Lancet retrospective case series by a Fleet Street hack.

Do you Boris receive any money from vaccine interests in any form? I don’t.

Why did the late Bernadine Healy state publicly that the our one size fits all vaccine policy is medically indefensible? Are you going to attack Healy’s credibility, or acknowledge that thoughtful, highly trained medical professionals have grave doubts about vaccine safety?

This isn’t about dueling study citations. You are defending the practice of injecting organic mercury into neonates. What concentrations of ethyl mercury are safe for injection? Based on what?

The SV40 issue demonstrates that the vaccine industry gets it wrong sometimes. SV40 is transmitted from parent to child and is implicated in cancer. That is why study of the expression of the SV40 virus is a subject of much university level research across the country.

Don’t want to go into SV40, eh Boris?

The vaccine industry should be held accountable to the same standards as every other area of medicine- the plaintiff’s bar.

Although SV40 was suspected to play a role in some cancers, there is no evidence showing that it causes cancer. Indeed, the evidence does not support a causative link.

That said, FDA and vaccine manufacturers of the time acted appropriately by halting distribution of the IPV when the contamination was discovered and by requiring new screening measures to ensure the purity of the vaccine.

@ Josh Mazer: You posted this same thing on Emily Willingham’s blog last week.

I provided you with Dr. Lewis’ credentials; he’s a former EPA employee who lost his job and he is a “sludge management” specialist. He was also disqualified as an expert witness for a doctor whose license was revoked in New York State for infecting many of his patients with hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses, due to his incompetence.

Lewis also claimed to have located the raw scoring sheets for the colon biopsies performed on Wakefield’s study “subjects”…in Wakefield’s personal files at Wakefield’s home office in Texas. He handed those raw scoring sheets to Brian Deer (with friends like Lewis, Wakefield need not worry about his enemies).

Why don’t you ask Wakefield and/or Lewis for the actual histopathology reports on those biopsies as well as the bowel specimen specimens that were fixed in paraffin? They all went mysteriously “missing”.

Your article is delightful, I really enjoyed reading it, The tone and tenor are exactly reminiscent of Karl Rove imploding on Fox News election night. Just as Ohio did in fact go for the President, despite Rove’s fervent protests, the medical evidence is overwhelming that your “article” is replete with factual errors. For example:

The incidence and prevalence of autism is increasing, so says Dr. Thomas Insell, chair of the IACC. Fact.

Evidence that hg accumulates in primate brains established by Burbacher et al NIEHS. Repirt on it instead of ignoring it.

There is a link between vaccines and neurological disorders including autism. This is firmly established by Vaccine Injury Compensation Program payouts to Poling and to Banks. The Pace University School of Environmental Law publishes that VICP has paid out over 1800 brain injury claims. Further study of 250 awards shows 1/3 carry autism among their diagnosis. Facts.

Rep Posey questioning Boyle about Thorsen was very revealing. Go watch the tape. She literally begins quavering in her response, that is how scared she is of the Thorsen situation. As you did not report, Thorsen was author/co-author of 21 studies purporting to show that injecting thimerosal into neonates is just fine. Rep Posey’s description of Thorsen as a “humungus scumbag” was a moment of atmosphere lightening humor, don’t you agree?

Wakefield’s seminal work associating ASD with gut disease was validated this month on Journal Pediatrics. Fact. Look it up. Further, the exoneration of Wakefield’s boss by Justice Mittig casts an unfavorable light on the sleazeball tactics used to smear the Lancet team. Dr. Lewis, chief scientists at whistleblowers.org, lambasts BMJ and Deer in a lengthy, excruciatingly well documented report

Rep Gosar, the medical doctor, made the point that the role of physicians is to ask questions and listen to the parents. That’s a drag for you, Salzberg, because the parents are eye witnesses to vaccine induced neurological injury.

The last point of evidence to put out here is the existence of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. You say the shots are safe, or at least safe enough. Fine. End the special legal status of vaccines and make them subject to plaintiff’s bar like every other area of medicine. Got a problem with that? Why?

How much longer do you think you can keep the bubble going Salzberg? Judging by this column of yours, which really is better described as an angry, petulant rant, not much. Suggest that you watch again Rove’s career destroying meltdown, because this column of yours could be your Waterloo moment as well. Good luck.

BTW- why no “Dr.” in front of your name here, as you referred to yourself in the Baltimore Sun? Hmmmmmm. Interesting. “Dr. of what is that exactly?

The Banks decision was misleadingly indexed (deliberately?) but the judgment is for PDD-NOS, autistic symptoms caused by a vaccine induced encephalitis (as so many parents have seen with their children). You are just indulging in a semantic game.

In your comment you avoided what the court actually said. Anyone that bothers to read the first two pages will see that the court was very clear on exactly what they meant.

“a ‘subthreshold’ condition in which some – but not all – features of autism or another explicitly identified Pervasive Developmental Disorder are identified.”

“cases where there is marked impairment of social interaction, communication, and/or stereotyped behavior patterns or interest, but when full features for autism or another explicitly defined PDD are not met.”

Thanks to the chaotic organisation of this website I have only just spotted this comment.

“Furthermore, Bailey’s ADEM was severe enough to cause lasting, residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading of Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD. The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of causation was not too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.”

“Moving on to the alternative hypothesis/diagnosis of autism, Dr. Lopez distinguishes autism as a more generalized condition without a known etiology, and contrasted it to Bailey’s condition, which he says is clearly attributable to demyelination based on neuroimaging evidence. Tr. at 41-42. Dr. Lopez also differentiated Bailey’s condition from autism, because Bailey has been affected in more than one developmental skill area; he clarified by stating that Bailey has “induced pervasive developmental delay…due to ADEM.” Tr. at 32. He noted that the conflation of designations resulted from a medical convention created for the sake of explanation to laymen, but that the two are not properly interchangeable, but actually quite distinct. Id. Speaking more directly, Dr. Lopez stated that “Bailey does not have autism because he has a reason for his deficits.”

There is peculiar circularity here the argument is that it is not classic autism just because it has a known cause, which is of course what many other parents would argue (nor would it be unique for an autism diagnosis to be associated with other loss of skills, as here). So, maybe it is not classic autism, but then perhaps if you are arguing damage as a cause it wouldn’t be.

So, what’s your point? The vaccine caused PDD (Pervasive Development Delay or Disorder), which by the way is the term rather than autism that Wakefield used in his much maligned paper. Incidentally, the HHS told Sharyl Attkisson in an email:

“We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.”

The short trailer to the movie The Greater Good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulmEGbwQsOU makes it clear that there are experts on both sides and a lot of serious questions that need to be asked. The medical community and health officials promote vaccines as the greatest achievement in modern medicine yet there is growing fear over vaccine side effects. There are over 200 independent studies done by well-credentialed experts that raise serious concerns about vaccine side effects shown on The Greater Good website. http://www.greatergoodmovie.org/learn-more/research/ Also see the National Vaccine Information Center http://www.nvic.org/, Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism http://www.ageofautism.com/

‘The Greater Good’ does not present the view of science*, it presents the views of those that oppose vaccines – a view shared by your organisation with it’s anti-vaccine stance and your constantly barracking of this throughout the internet.

— * Here as the collective plural. Holding up a few individuals with contrarian views doesn’t speak for science as a whole.